5 ms·

I believe the cracked games are on sufficiently obscure websites to be a deterrent to regular users. So maybe 10% of those people that would otherwise not have

I believe the cracked games are on sufficiently obscure websites to be a deterrent to regular users. So maybe 10% of those people that would otherwise not have paid will just buy a DRM game instead of cracking it. One could even argue that it is pro consumer by making sure the revenue will go back to paying consumers in the form of additional content, instead of paying for players who didn't buy it.

the_af 6y ago
Cracked games websites are as obscure as The Pirate Bay, i.e. not very. Plus everyone who downloads a pirated game points his/her friends to the site, or directly shares the downloaded files. Even if you weren't aware of where to get warez, your friends will be. > One could even argue that it is pro consumer One really couldn't. It punishes buyers with encumbered software while merely delaying pirates a short while. Pirates end up with the better experience, so...
- Camas 6y ago
  >as obscure as The Pirate Bay, i.e. not very Blocked in Europe, China, Australia, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_T...
  - the_af 6y ago
    ... and I'm sure there are no ways around that, right? Wink, wink.
    - Camas 6y ago
      opening a pdf is a difficult task for most people exaggerating slightly but you know what I mean
      - the_af 6y ago
        All it takes is one of your friends who knows how to. Then they'll share with you. And much like opening PDFs, this isn't rocket science. The base knowledge here is people who know how to install and play pretty complex games. These people go to impossible lengths to install video drivers and troubleshoot problems with their computers; I'm sure they won't find this particular task very difficult.
  - wtf_is_up 6y ago
    Just as recent as yesterday I accessed TPB while connected to a VPN server located in Sweden.
  - russelg 6y ago
    All of these blockades are simple ISP-level DNS redirections. Simply changing your DNS to google or cloudflare or similar resolves this quite nicely, no VPN needed.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Cracked games websites are as obscure as The Pirate Bay, i.e. not very. Plus everyone who downloads a pirated game points his/her friends to the site, or directly shares the downloaded files. Even if you weren't aware of where to get warez, your friends will be. you might be surprised at how obscure torrents have become outside of tech circles. when I graduated college (2017), basically no one outside of the comp sci department understood how to use torrents (or even knew what they were). this would have been unthinkable when I was in high school. everyone and their mother seemed to be torrenting music and movies. I even tried explaining how to use them to people, but they would object that the school would catch them anyway. when I explained how VPNs work, they complained that $6/month was too expensive for a poor college student. nevermind that they're already paying for prime, netflix, and hulu subscriptions every month. I think there are two main reasons for this. a lot of people have laptops with the base storage option, often a 256GB or even 128GB ssd. phones have even less storage. this makes it unappealing to keep a local library of music and especially movies (plus now that everyone has a phone and a laptop, syncing your collection becomes annoying). second, I think video and especially music streaming services have actually succeeded in making their products just convenient enough that people don't feel like figuring out how to use torrent trackers and clients.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I don't think it's the obscurity of the website that is doing it these days. I have plenty of money so I haven't downloaded warez for a long time. But if I were even tempted the possibility of getting hit with embedded ransomware would completely deter me, my multiple offsite backups notwithstanding.
p1necone 6y ago
This is just one piece of anecdata, but I'm perfectly capable of pirating games yet haven't in years. I buy everything on steam or gog because it's so convenient. The last time I pirated any video games was suprise surprise when I wasn't making enough income to buy them. TV series on the other hand I still pirate to this day (if they aren't on the couple of streaming services I sub to), because buying them is way too complicated (even impossible with a large portion of shows that aren't current, and a fair number of current shows too). Movies are a mixed bag - grabbing cheap dvds or blu rays of pretty much anything is easy online so I usually do that, but I imagine if I preferred digital media or watched enough movies for my physical collection to be unwieldy I'd resort to piracy because buying digital copies of movies is just as complicated as TV. Give me "Steam for Movies and TV" or a streaming service that aggregates licenses from everyone, and doesn't only host the content that they think will be most popular and I'll probably stop pirating those too.
- Causality1 6y ago
  It's the unreliability I can't tolerate. I don't pirate pc games because when I buy something on Steam it will always be available for me to download, even if a licensing problem means other people can't buy it. With streaming, who knows? Maybe Netflix loses the rights and it disappears. Maybe their encode is garbage and it ruins the dark scenes. So, I still pay for streaming services but anything I actually care about I download and archive.
  - kroltan 6y ago
    > Maybe Netflix loses the rights and it disappears. That is interesting because it happened to me in the most annoying way possible: I was watching Donnie Darko, a rather obscure movie that requires (or at least for me required) a bit of brainpower to watch. So I watched the first half of it and planned to watch the remainder the next day. Come the next day, and where is the movie? Nowhere to be found.
    - cableshaft 6y ago
      That happened to me with Stargate SG-1. Was going through it on Netflix and suddenly it disappeared. Eventually resurfaced on Amazon Prime but the video quality is garbage on it for some reason.

the_af 6y ago

Cracked games websites are as obscure as The Pirate Bay, i.e. not very. Plus everyone who downloads a pirated game points his/her friends to the site, or directly shares the downloaded files. Even if you weren't aware of where to get warez, your friends will be. > One could even argue that it is pro consumer One really couldn't. It punishes buyers with encumbered software while merely delaying pirates a short while. Pirates end up with the better experience, so...

Camas 6y ago
>as obscure as The Pirate Bay, i.e. not very Blocked in Europe, China, Australia, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_T...
- the_af 6y ago
  ... and I'm sure there are no ways around that, right? Wink, wink.
  - Camas 6y ago
    opening a pdf is a difficult task for most people exaggerating slightly but you know what I mean
    - the_af 6y ago
      All it takes is one of your friends who knows how to. Then they'll share with you. And much like opening PDFs, this isn't rocket science. The base knowledge here is people who know how to install and play pretty complex games. These people go to impossible lengths to install video drivers and troubleshoot problems with their computers; I'm sure they won't find this particular task very difficult.
- wtf_is_up 6y ago
  Just as recent as yesterday I accessed TPB while connected to a VPN server located in Sweden.
- russelg 6y ago
  All of these blockades are simple ISP-level DNS redirections. Simply changing your DNS to google or cloudflare or similar resolves this quite nicely, no VPN needed.
leetcrew 6y ago
> Cracked games websites are as obscure as The Pirate Bay, i.e. not very. Plus everyone who downloads a pirated game points his/her friends to the site, or directly shares the downloaded files. Even if you weren't aware of where to get warez, your friends will be. you might be surprised at how obscure torrents have become outside of tech circles. when I graduated college (2017), basically no one outside of the comp sci department understood how to use torrents (or even knew what they were). this would have been unthinkable when I was in high school. everyone and their mother seemed to be torrenting music and movies. I even tried explaining how to use them to people, but they would object that the school would catch them anyway. when I explained how VPNs work, they complained that $6/month was too expensive for a poor college student. nevermind that they're already paying for prime, netflix, and hulu subscriptions every month. I think there are two main reasons for this. a lot of people have laptops with the base storage option, often a 256GB or even 128GB ssd. phones have even less storage. this makes it unappealing to keep a local library of music and especially movies (plus now that everyone has a phone and a laptop, syncing your collection becomes annoying). second, I think video and especially music streaming services have actually succeeded in making their products just convenient enough that people don't feel like figuring out how to use torrent trackers and clients.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I don't think it's the obscurity of the website that is doing it these days. I have plenty of money so I haven't downloaded warez for a long time. But if I were even tempted the possibility of getting hit with embedded ransomware would completely deter me, my multiple offsite backups notwithstanding.

p1necone 6y ago

This is just one piece of anecdata, but I'm perfectly capable of pirating games yet haven't in years. I buy everything on steam or gog because it's so convenient. The last time I pirated any video games was suprise surprise when I wasn't making enough income to buy them. TV series on the other hand I still pirate to this day (if they aren't on the couple of streaming services I sub to), because buying them is way too complicated (even impossible with a large portion of shows that aren't current, and a fair number of current shows too). Movies are a mixed bag - grabbing cheap dvds or blu rays of pretty much anything is easy online so I usually do that, but I imagine if I preferred digital media or watched enough movies for my physical collection to be unwieldy I'd resort to piracy because buying digital copies of movies is just as complicated as TV. Give me "Steam for Movies and TV" or a streaming service that aggregates licenses from everyone, and doesn't only host the content that they think will be most popular and I'll probably stop pirating those too.

Causality1 6y ago
It's the unreliability I can't tolerate. I don't pirate pc games because when I buy something on Steam it will always be available for me to download, even if a licensing problem means other people can't buy it. With streaming, who knows? Maybe Netflix loses the rights and it disappears. Maybe their encode is garbage and it ruins the dark scenes. So, I still pay for streaming services but anything I actually care about I download and archive.
- kroltan 6y ago
  > Maybe Netflix loses the rights and it disappears. That is interesting because it happened to me in the most annoying way possible: I was watching Donnie Darko, a rather obscure movie that requires (or at least for me required) a bit of brainpower to watch. So I watched the first half of it and planned to watch the remainder the next day. Come the next day, and where is the movie? Nowhere to be found.
  - cableshaft 6y ago
    That happened to me with Stargate SG-1. Was going through it on Netflix and suddenly it disappeared. Eventually resurfaced on Amazon Prime but the video quality is garbage on it for some reason.